GIMME SHELTER: HOW NORTH CAROLINA IS COMBATING THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING SHORTAGE.

• Author: Smith, Katherine Snow

The longstanding shortage of homes for essential workers continues to worsen. Throughout North Carolina, teachers, firefighters, hospitality staffers and other rank-and-file workers are struggling to find affordable housing near their jobs.

"This is one of the biggest issues for employers across the state," says Mark Brooks, president of Brooks Engineering Associates, an Asheville-based civil engineering firm. "I've run this company for 20 years and when I make a job offer out of town or out of state, I've rarely been turned down. Now I can't get anyone from anywhere to come because they say it's too expensive to find a place to live."

In North Carolina, 27% of residents are considered cost-burdened because they spend more than 30% of their income on housing, according to the N.C. Housing Coalition, a nonprofit advocating for affordable solutions. The squeeze is even tighter in counties including Buncombe, Durham, Guilford, New Hanover and Watauga.

"Developers are not going to build affordable, price-restricted units all on their own. There's a math problem," says Tyler Mulligan, professor of public law and government at UNC Chapel Hill's School of Government. "At lower rents, there is just not enough revenue for those developers to make a profit. So we aren't getting affordable housing at the level that is needed."

North Carolina communities are using everything from tax credits to a new kind of construction popular on TikTok to address the problem. This story looks at several examples:

The Low Income Housing Tax Credit programs, which Greensboro developer Chester Brown III calls "the best vehicle for workforce housing right now."

Chapel Hill, Davidson and Manteo have mandatory zoning ordinances that call for developers to designate 10% or more of their for-sale units as affordable. Or, they can pay a set fee into a city-run housing fund.

Asheville, Durham, Wilmington, Winston-Salem and other cities have amended residential zoning to allow for smaller, secondary homes, which are called accessory dwelling units.

Charlotte and Raleigh instituted new zoning rules that broaden where townhouses, duplexes, triplexes and quadruplexes can be built. The theory is that denser housing will boost affordability and diversify neighborhoods.

Mills River, which is between Asheville and Hendersonville, has a thriving 80-unit community of "tiny homes" that are 400 square feet or smaller.

It's a low-cost alternative in the increasingly pricy mountain region.

Dare County has about 500 housing rental units in the works after partnering with UNC consultants to combat its housing shortage.

These measures may just be a splinter in a two-by-four. Five hundred affordable homes in Dare County barely touch the 5,000 households that are considered cost-burdened. Eighty tiny homes in Mills River compare with 45,000 households in Henderson and Buncombe counties that are paying nearly a third or more of their income for housing.

But you have to start somewhere.

HERE'S A LOOK HT EFFORTS THAT OPTIMISTS SRY MIGHT MAKE A DENT IN THE STATE'S HOUSING CRISIS.

TAX CREDITS WORK

Greensboro nonprofit Affordable Housing Management has been...